Recasting the Colonial Order

Abstract

The French territories suffered much less during the Second World War than islands where fighting raged, and adaptation to the post-war world brought less dramatic change than, for example, in those islands in Micronesia from which Japan was evicted and administration given to another foreign power. Yet significant dislocation had resulted from the French islands being cut off from the métropole for five years, all the while subjected to the American presence. International conditions changed in the Pacific — notably with the detonation of the first nuclear bomb, the defeat of Japan and an increased role for the United States in the region — and in the French empire. At the end of the war, France (and other imperial countries) did not seriously consider the possibility of decolonisation, certainly not in the immediate future, but new conditions warranted a recasting of the old colonial order with the aim of bringing about economic development and political evolution but also at preserving the influence of the ‘mother country’ in distant domains.